"It's 1927 and eighteen-year-old Mary Engle is hired to work as a secretary at a remote but scenic institution for mentally disabled women called the Nettleton State Village for Feebleminded Women of Childbearing Age. She's immediately in awe of her employer--brilliant, genteel Dr. Agnes Vogel. Dr. Vogel had been the only woman in her class in medical school. As a young psychiatrist she was an outspoken crusader for women's suffrage. Now, at age...

John Grisham returns to Clanton, Mississippi, to tell the story of an unthinkable murder, the bizarre trial that follows it, and its profound and lasting effect on the people of Ford County. Pete Banning was Clanton's favorite son, a returning war hero, the patriarch of a prominent family, a farmer, father, neighbor, and a faithful member of the Methodist church. Then one cool October morning in 1946, he rose early, drove into town, walked into the...

Francie lives with a violent, alcoholic father and a manic depressive, suicidal mother. The pressures on Francie to grow up are immense. When his mother commits suicide and his friend, Joe, goes off to boarding school, Francie sinks ever deeper into paranoia thanks mainly to his nasty neighbour Mrs. Nugent. He begins to have a fantasy where he has visions of the Virgin Mary. After his father dies, Francie becomes more despondent, culminating in the...